No Good Deed
by thunderstruck
Summary: Draco didn't ask for it. He didn't deserve it. What he got cost him the one thing he valued most in his life. [one shot]


Disclaimer: I own NADA. Except the plot, which came to me while driving home one night. Everything else belongs to J.K. Rowling. Yeah, you know the drill.

A/N: Okay, so one night I was driving home, listening to my "Wicked" cd (and if you don't know what "Wicked" is… shame on you). So there is a song called "No Good Deed" and as I listened (and sang…) this idea popped into my head, so I had to write it. Didn't turn out QUITE like I pictured it, but hey, doesn't that always happen? Yeah, so if you can get your hands on a copy/version of "No Good Deed" (or the whole cd, cuz its amazing) then maybe you'll be able to see the tie-ins… yeah, all like, two of them. Alright, enough rambling. Here ya go!

* * *

No Good Deed

_The war was over. They had won. Voldemort had been defeated once and for all. The wizarding world, for the first time in over 20 years, could sleep easy._

_Everyone, that is, except for Ginny._

_She hadn't heard a single word from or even about him since they'd "taken him away."_

It had been a dark, cold night. The wind was blowing, rain battered the windows, and the moon was non-existent behind the thick storm clouds. Ginny sat at home in her flat, alone, as she did often. The lamp on the table across from her gave off a warm glow. She held her ceremonial cup of hot tea and stared into the black abyss outside her window.

Suddenly, there was an urgent rapping at her door. She set down her tea on the table and hurried to unlock it. She opened the door cautiously and peered through the crack. It was him.

"Ginny…"

She opened the door completely and let him in. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her hard on the lips.

"Draco, what's wrong?" Ginny worried when he broke away.

He picked up her hands in his and gave them a quick kiss. "Ginny, I just want you to know how much I love you. That's all that matters. You must always remember that." He cast a nervous look back towards the closed door, then returned his gaze to a set of worried, confused eyes.

"Draco, I don't understand. What is _wrong_!"

Suddenly, there were quick, heavy footsteps out in the hall. "In here," said a deep voice outside the Ginny's door. Ginny swallowed hard and shot Draco a nervous glimpse.

"Alohamora!"

The door flew open and three Aurors stormed through the threshold. "There!" one shouted, pointing directly at Draco. They ran to grab a hold of him.

Draco looked intently at Ginny and mouthed, 'I love you' to Ginny as two of the Aurors grabbed each arm and began to pull him away.

"Draco!" Ginny cried. "What's going on! What are you doing with him!" She tried to reach Draco, but the third Auror held her back.

"This man is a criminal. He needs to pay for all of the pain he has caused," the Auror explained in a monotonous voice, as if it were a speech he had committed to memory.

The Aurors holding Draco struggled to keep him moving out into the corridor. To Ginny's horror, he did not appear to be fighting back with his full potential. "Ginny, I didn't—!"

"Silencio!"

Draco's mouth continued to move, but no words came from it. His captors dragged him down the hall, out of sight from Ginny's door. She broke free of the Auror's grasp and ran through the doorway. At the end of the corridor, the two men held Draco to the wall. He looked at Ginny with a defeated, sorrow-filled glance. The man on his right reached out and touched a door handle. In an instant, all three were gone.

"Draco…" Ginny whispered to herself. She heard a 'pop!' behind her and the third Auror had apparated to wherever they had taken Draco.

Ginny fell to her knees next to the wall as hot tears began to fall from her eyes. "Draco!" she shouted once more, praying that it was loud enough to wake her up from this nightmare. She laid her head against the wall and began to sob. She didn't understand. What had he done? And why wouldn't he tell her?

After what seemed like an eternity waiting for them to reappear with Draco, saying it was all just a big mistake, Ginny gathered herself and went back into her apartment. Her long-forgotten tea had turned cold in the elapsed time. Ginny made for the bedroom, flung herself on the bed, and proceeded to cry herself to sleep.

* * *

When Ginny woke the next morning, everything was a blur. She had trouble remembering the sequence of events: Draco had come unexpectedly, told her he loved her, and then the Aurors had come. Everything after that was hazy. 

Ginny looked in the hall mirror as she passed. Her eyes were bloodshot from a night of crying. She walked to the front door, noted the fact that it was still unlocked from the Auror's spell, and opened it. She picked up the copy of the Daily Prophet on her door step and brought it inside.

What she saw on the front page brought everything from the previous night rushing back to her.

It was Draco.

He was in Azkaban. There was no mistaking it. The old, ratty, striped jumper told her so. She remembered a similar look on Sirius when he had escaped Azkaban all those years ago.

The headline read, "Malfoy Heir Arrested, Charged With Murder." Ginny stumbled as she read it. That couldn't be true. Draco would never kill anyone. She bumped into the coffee table as she made for the couch, knocking over the still-full cup of tea from the night before. It went unnoticed, though, as Ginny read the article, horrorstruck. It stated that Draco had been charged with the death of a young woman outside of the Three Broomsticks the day before. She had been an innocent bystander caught in the cross fire of a not-so-innocent duel between an Auror and a Death Eater. The Auror got away. The Death Eater… he had landed himself in Azkaban. And he was staring back at Ginny with deep despair.

"Death Eater…" Ginny breathed, unwilling to believe it. Draco wasn't a Death Eater. He had assured her of that. He promised her he would never be like his father.

"Obviously," Ginny said weakly, "promises mean nothing to him." She threw the paper across the room and curled her legs up under her chin. She couldn't cry anymore. There were no more tears left. All she could do was acknowledge the hollow feeling inside her stomach.

He had lied to her.

* * *

3 years went by, but Ginny never heard from Draco. Every night for months after the incident she had seen his face in her dreams. She watched again and again as the Aurors took him away. And every night, she woke up in a cold sweat, filled with anger and resentment. All she really wanted was an apology. She wanted him to be sorry for lying to her. She secretly hoped Azkaban was making him suffer. 

She didn't read the Daily Prophet anymore. She couldn't stand the fact that every day's front page was adorned with his picture and an article dripping with some new scandal they had linked him to. It made her sick to think how much she had loved him. He had become one of her best friends, and he had betrayed her trust.

It was Ginny's 26th birthday. She was at home, getting ready to go out to dinner to celebrate. Life had become better over the years. She moved on from Draco. He was merely a black mark in her memory. One that though she tried, she could never fully erase.

As she fussed with her hair, there was a knock at her front door. Ginny glanced at her wristwatch: it was only 5:40. She wasn't getting picked up until 6. She hurried to the door, wondering who could be standing behind it. She undid the lock, turned the knob, and opened the door. She had to cover her mouth to stifle the gasp that escaped her mouth.

It was Draco.

Ginny just stared wide-eyed, hand over her mouth, unwilling to believe it was really him. But there he stood, in the flesh: the man she had loved… and the man she had learned to hate.

"Well, are you just going to stand there and stare at me? Or are you going to invite me to come in?" Draco said with a smirk. He was wearing normal clothes. His Azkaban robes were gone.

Ginny, still unable to find her words, moved out of the doorway and let him pass through. "What are you doing here?" she said finally.

"We haven't seen each other for three years and the first thing you say to me is 'What am I doing here?'"

"Well I'm in a bit of shock right now, you're not the first person I expected to see standing on my doorstep. And HOW exactly are you here? I mean, you're supposed to be in Azkaban, aren't you? How did you escape? There must've been extra reinforced security around you considering… who you are…" Ginny rambled.

"Whoa, whoa now. The mute one suddenly can't shut up. Did you not read the Daily Prophet this morning?" He looked at her imploringly.

"For your information, I don't read that _thing_ anymore. I got sick of seeing your face everyday." Ginny was suddenly fuming, remembering how much he had hurt her by lying to her.

"I'm beginning to get the sense that you're angry at me…"

"Oh ho ho… angry doesn't even begin to DESCRIBE it, Draco! Do you have any idea what your lies did to me?" Her eyes were fiery with rage.

"My… lies? Ginny…"

"Don't 'Ginny' me! I found out all I needed to know the day they locked you up. You deserved to be in Azkaban! If not just because you killed that poor girl, but because you were a fucking Death Eater and you never so much as had the decency to tell me!"

"Ginevra Weasley," Ginny flinched at the sound of her name. Draco's voice was stern and cold. "Don't you EVER accuse someone of a thing like that again before you know the facts."

When she didn't respond, he pulled a rolled up newspaper out of his back pocket and forced it into her hands. Still seething, Ginny opened it up to the front page. Her eyes grew wide again when she read the headline.

"Malfoy Heir Cleared of Charges—All A Big Mistake."

"What…?" Ginny said in a whisper.

"I'm innocent, Gin. Always have been and always will be. I didn't do all that rubbish they said I did. And I most DEFINITELY was never a Death Eater. Do you really think I'm like that?" His voice now hid a trace of hurt, but Ginny didn't seem to notice it.

"So you're trying to tell me that they arrested you and locked you up for two years by _mistake_? How can they do something like that? But wait just a minute. There were witnesses that saw you with the girl right when she died. They said you were standing over her body…"

"Gin, I was in the Three Broomsticks when it happened. The duel was going on right outside. I ran out to see what was happening, and before I knew it, the girl was killed. The Death Eater sent Avada Kedavra at the Auror, but he misfired and it hit the girl. He hit the Auror with a memory charm this time, so he wouldn't remember him to testify against him being a Death Eater. He apparated away just as everyone came running to see what had happened."

Ginny watched as Draco's eyes clouded a bit, trying to remember the incident.

"Let's evaluate the situation now. Auror knocked out, girl dead on the ground, and one of the most infamous Death Eaters' son standing directly over the dead girl's body. What do you think people concluded?"

"That you… you were a Death Eater…" Ginny began to feel numb.

"Exactly. I was simply trying to help out, but the real Death Eater was gone. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess."

"But then, why didn't you tell me? Why did you just give up and let them take you away?"

"Gin, I had no choice. They would've found me eventually. I thought I had a better chance of getting caught, then hopefully proving them wrong in the trial, and being set free."

"Well, obviously _that_ plan didn't work," Ginny remarked snidely, crossing her arms. "But that still doesn't answer my question of why you didn't tell me that it wasn't you they wanted."

"I tried Ginny, I tried! Don't you remember!"

Ginny just glared at him.

"When they were taking me away, I tried to tell you! They silenced me, but I kept talking. I hoped you had enough brains in your head to read my lips!"

"Actually, I was a little overwhelmed at the moment. Sorry, I'll remember that for next time."

"Oh, you're a funny one." Now Draco was glaring daggers.

"Tell me this, now: the war was over five months ago. Why are you just getting out now?"

"They caught a good number of the Death Eaters after the last battle. They gave each one a taste of Veritaserum, and the guy who REALLY killed that girl ended up confessing everything about that day," Draco stated matter-of-factly.

"Then why didn't you write? You still had a chance to tell me."

"Oh come on! Do you really think they let owls fly in and out of Azkaban with prisoners' personal messages! Are you mad!"

"Not anymore. I was mad, Draco. I was furious. I couldn't sleep because I was left thinking that the man I loved had lied to me the whole time. Do you know what that's like? I wasted months waiting for you to send some sort of sign that everything would be alright, and that everything was a big misunderstanding. I never got that sign, and now you decide just to come up to my door, like none of this ever happened, expecting to walk back into my life without question?"

"Ginny, I know how hard it must have been on you. Merlin, it killed me not to be able to communicate with you. I thought I was going to die just because I wasn't with you. But now," he picked up her hands, which now hung loosely at her sides, "everything IS alright, and we can start over. We can be together again…" He stopped. His finger skated over something hard on Ginny's finger. He brought her hand up to examine it.

"I'm sorry Draco. You're just a day late."

Draco swallowed hard. Ginny was getting married. And not to him.

"Who… who is it?" he managed to get out.

Just then, there was another knock at the door. Ginny pulled her hands from Draco's as she made for the door. She opened it, and an all-too-familiar voice reached Draco's ears.

"Hey Gin, you look wonderful." A flash of black hair came into the doorway as its owner leaned in to give Ginny a kiss.

'It can't be…' Draco feared.

Ginny turned back to Draco and their eyes met. She read the sorrow in his eyes, but felt no remorse. Following her gaze, the dark-haired man came into the room, green eyes meeting gray.

"Malfoy."

"Potter."

"Draco… Harry and I, well, we're…" she started, but Draco cut her off, his glare never leaving Harry's.

"Save it, Weasley. It was a mistake to come back here. I should have known you wouldn't wait for me. I guess I was just too head-over-heels crazy about you to realize it. I waited for you Ginny. I'll never make _that_ mistake again. Have a nice life together."

And without final glance back at Ginny, Draco walked through the door and out of her life. He wasn't forced, he wasn't struggling, but this time, he wasn't coming back.


End file.
